In the mountains of western Myanmar, photographs of fallen fighters line a wall of a rebel headquarters – an honour roll of some 80 young men, beginning with 28-year-old Salai Cung Naw Piang, who was killed in May 2021.

The true toll on the Chin National Defence Force (CNDF) extends beyond this hall and grows as war against Myanmar’s military grinds on in Chin State – a Christian region of the country bordering India where ethnic Chin fighters have expelled the military from most of their territory.

“Even if they don’t surrender, we will go till the end, inch by inch,” CNDF Vice President Peter Thang told Al Jazeera in a recent interview.

Launched in mid-November, the Chin offensive to capture the town of Falam – codenamed “Mission Jerusalem” – has come at a heavy cost. About 50 CNDF and allied fighters were killed in the first six weeks, some buried alive after direct air strikes by jet fighters of Myanmar’s military regime on earthen bunkers, Thang said.

Thang estimated similar casualties among Myanmar’s military, and more than 100 government soldiers captured, in the continuing operation.

Formed by civilians to fight the military after the 2021 coup in Myanmar, the CNDF has encircled the regime’s last garrison in a hilltop base in Falam.

“We are facing a difficult time,” Thang admitted.

“If God is willing to hand over the enemy, we will take it,” he said of Mission Jerusalem’s ultimate objective.

Taking and holding Falam – Chin State’s former capital – would also mark the first district centre captured by the country’s new rebel forces without support from established ethnic armies, according to Thang, who ran a travel agency in Myanmar’s commercial capital Yangon before the coup.

“We have more challenges than others,” he said.

“The military has so much technology. We have limited weapons, and even some of them we can’t operate,” he added.

With the CNDF supported by fighters from 15 newly formed armed groups, including from Myanmar’s ethnic Bamar majority, about 600 rebels have besieged Falam and the roughly 120 government soldiers who, confined to their hilltop base, depend on supplies dropped by helicopter for their survival.

Unlike established ethnic armies who are fighting to gain more territory for themselves, the rebel forces massed in Chin State said they aim to overthrow Myanmar’s military regime entirely.

While the CNDF and allies in the Chin Brotherhood (CB) coalition scored previous victories against the military with help from the powerful Arkan Army [AA] to thesouth in Rakhine State,  seizing Falam independently would represent a new phase in Myanmar’s revolution.

But the biggest challenge in the battle remains aerial attacks by the military.

Operations against the hilltop base in Falam trigger bombardments from the military’s Russian and Chinese fighter jets, along with rocket-propelled grenades, artillery, sniper and machinegun fire from troops defending the outpost.

CNDF commanders told how the besieged soldiers once chatted freely with locals and some had even married local Chin women. But that all changed when Myanmar’s security forces shot peaceful protesters demonstrating against the military’s ousting of Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government in 2021.

Demonstrators fought back, and an uprising was born that has become steeped in blood and the lore of many martyrs.

Mya Thwe Thwe Khaing, a 19-year-old protester, was the first victim – shot in the head by police on February 9, 2021 in the country’s capital, Naypyidaw.

In April 2021, armed with hunting rifles, the Chin launched the first significant battle of Myanmar’s uprising in Mindat town, which has since been liberated.

Now the rebels are equipped with assault rifles and grenade launchers. They control most of the countryside and several towns, but remain outgunned, as the military entrenches itself in urban centres. Unable to launch ground offensives from their depleted ranks, the regime’s generals have turned to forced conscription and indiscriminate air strikes nationwide.

According to rights group the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, the military has killed at least 6,533 civilians since the coup. With at least 3.5 million people displaced inside the country, according to the United Nations, observers predict even fiercer fighting this year.

In Falam, CNDF defence secretary Olivia Thawng Luai said spouses live with some of the soldiers in the surrounded hilltop holdout.

“Most soldiers want to leave their base but they are under the commander’s control,” said Olivia Thawng Luai, a former national karate champion. “They aren’t allowed to leave the base or use their phones,” she said.

Another senior CNDF figure, Timmy Htut, said the commander in the besieged base still has his own phone – and the rebels call his number regularly.

“One day he will pick up,” he said. “When he’s ready.”

Attempts by the military to send reinforcements to Falam have failed. Helicopters, facing sheets of gunfire, have dropped conscripted airborne recruits on Falam’s outskirts, ordering them to fight their way into the town. None has succeeded.

A captured soldier said his unit was dropped in without a plan, and, under heavy fire and pursued by resistance fighters, they scattered in chaos.

“Some died, others ran in all directions,” the soldier told Al Jazeera.

“The headquarters said they couldn’t waste their jet sorties for just a few of us,” he said. The military, he continued, has lost “many skilful, valuable” soldiers since the coup.

“They gave their lives for nothing,” he said.

“In the end, the military leaders will offer peace talks, and there will probably be democracy.”

Among the people displaced by fighting in Falam, and who are forced to shelter under bridges and tarpaulins, a new generation prepares to fight.

Junior, 15, who assists at a Chin hospital camp, spoke from an air raid shelter within earshot of jets dropping bombs.

“I’ll do whatever I can,” Junior said. “There’s no way to study in Myanmar. I don’t want future generations to face this,” she said.

But the Chin resistance is also grappling with internal division. It has split into two factions: one led by the Chin National Front (CNF), established in 1988, along with its allies, and the other, the Chin Brotherhood, comprising six post-coup resistance groups, including the CNDF.

Their dispute centres on who shapes Chin’s future – the CNF favouring a dialect-based governance structure, the CB preferring the governing of townships. This distinction between language and land determines the distribution of power, and, coupled with tribal rivalries and traditional mistrust, has led to occasional violent clashes among the Chin groups.

Myanmar analyst R Lakher described the divide as “serious”, though mediation efforts by northeast India’s Mizoram authorities show progress.

On February 26, the two rival factions announced they would merge to form the Chin National Council, with a goal of uniting different armed groups under one military leadership and administration.

While welcoming the development, Lakher stressed the process must be “very systematic” and include key political leaders from either side, not only advocacy groups.

“Chin civilians have suffered most,” he said. “Despite liberation, some cannot return home because of this internal conflict.”

Capturing Falam would be “significant”, he said, as nearby Tedim town would then present an easier target, potentially freeing up more territory for the CB and strengthening their negotiating position with the CNF coalition.

Lakher estimated more than 70 percent of Chin State has been liberated.

“We’ve seen the junta being defeated across Myanmar,” he said. “But pro-democracy forces need unity.”

He said the onus was on the National Unity Government – described as Myanmar’s shadow government – to “bring all democratic forces together”.

“With so many armed groups, there’s concern they’ll fight each other without strong leadership,” he said. “Ethnic areas are being liberated while Bamar lands remain under military control. The revolution’s pace now depends on the Bamar people.”

Along the road leading out of Falam town, two trucks loaded with captured regime soldiers drove past Chin’s bombed churches, gardens of mustard leaf, and mothers cradling babies under heavy shawls. As the trucks crossed paths with resistance fighters heading to the front, the nervous prisoners of war claimed they had been forced into military service.

“You were conscripted five months ago,” a rebel fighter remonstrated with prisoners in the truck. “What were you doing before then? he asked. He then added: “We’ve been fighting the revolution.”

Another rebel joined in the rebuke.

“Count yourselves lucky to be captured here,” he said – and not in the country’s harsh central drylands, where rebel units roam unchecked.

“None of you would be alive there,” he added.

[Aljazeera]